CatBus

Trying to find themes that tie together bad movies I like, or movies I like for the wrong reasons, I found I have a soft spot for movies that take themselves way too damn seriously, but they always work out to be comedies in my book. I cannot watch Silence of the Lambs with a straight face. It is impossible. Yet, even though I recognize that’s not the goal of the film at all, I love it, and I feel it achieves its horror/detective genre goals as well, although I can’t quite get there myself because of the hilarity. Wild Things is a little different. First, you have to watch it in French. Because a trashy American movie is just trash, but a trashy French movie is edgy. Also, with different voice actors, you can kindof pretend Denise Richards isn’t really in it, so there’s that. Then, thusly enfrenched, the movie is fantastic. The actors are all acting their hearts out (voice actors too), as if they are completely unaware what sort of movie they showed up to act in today. All except Bill Murray, who is fully aware what he’s soaking in, and he hams it up appropriately. So for this one, I like it for the comedy value, but I can’t really claim it achieves any other genre goals other than making me like Bill Murray even more than I already do. Signs I just can’t save. It’s the only movie where I (and the friend I watched it with) were falling out of our seats laughing at the opening credits. So, so, so very serious. Such drama. Unfortunately there wasn’t much else to recommend the thing, but the opening credits I could probably do again.

It’s still green in 2.7, although I’m not making any statements about what it’s supposed to look like. Some guy walking nearby off-camera with a big green tarp can easily make nearby white walls temporarily look greenish – white is by its nature very strongly affected by lighting conditions, so I’d look to a reference if a good enough one exists.

BMadden said:

Did I just enter a time warp back to the year 2000? Just wow.

You have to warn them! Don’t let them cancel Firefly!

I hope you don’t mind me being a bit off-topic here, but I just took a look through 2.7 and I think I have a new favorite version of Star Wars to watch. Great work, towne32 and everyone!

FrankT said:

Aren’t there any TVs that let you zoom in on the image? Like they used to do for widescreen?

I’m not sure this topic needs to continue to shamble along in search of fresh brains, but yes. Actually most TV’s sold today zoom in on the image a little by default, trimming a few pixels from all sides, unless you find the option to tell it not to do that. Overscan is still with us in the digital HDTV world, it’s just a smaller amount. I don’t know about TV’s, but my Blu-ray player allows me to zoom the film in or out, with several options ranging from 1/2 size to 3X magnification. This is very useful for things like the GOUT which end up both letterboxed and pillarboxed on a 16x9 display, so you can zoom quite a bit without truncating the image at all–but of course, the poor image quality is then even more apparent.

PM sent.

Ah, another American 😉

No, usually marvins seeds it, and he’s been offline for a while, so 9.1 never happened on the spleen. If you want a better ratio, you could volunteer to be the initial 9.2 seeder…

Also, tehparadox has been inaccessible for some time, so those links (if it ever comes back up again) are also still outdated.

PM sent. Sorry Hostmaster, didn’t mean to go all angry Wookiee on you 😉

PM sent.

I know Hostmaster and I have already discussed this privately, but for the sake of the thread, I wanted to add that I recommend against using the SRT files from this project for subtitles at all, and especially in combination with tsmuxer which has some bugs like the one mentioned above. tsmuxer allows you to add BD-SUP files instead of SRT files, which is really the only way I recommend using the subtitles from this project (the process is described in the README). You can also use media players like MPC-HC, which allow you to add external BD-SUP files that are not muxed into the video stream.

Yeah, I know, getting people to stop using SRT files for subtitles is an uphill battle, but I’m trying.

D’oh! Never tried using ffmpeg before, I just assumed it was a totally different encoder.

Project Threepio v9.2 is now available, with updated fonts. Major differences are that the Jedi font is now designed to work at a normal weight instead of needing to be bolded, various minor improvements, and new fonts for international prints. At least right now, that means one “international” font for Star Wars which matches an Italian reference print, but may or may not match other international prints, and one “international” font for Jedi, which matches German and Italian references (and it’s more or less the same as the English Star Wars font). The international reference prints even helped improve the English fonts, since the English subtitles exclude certain letters. Thanks to Laserschwert, thxita, and Leonardo for the help with this.

mapet318 said:

I call it “A New Hope” or “Episode IV” because nobody outside of a minority of fanboys cares what it’s called.

I’d try to parse this sentence in a way that isn’t unintentionally self-deprecating, but why?

Project files have been updated to version 9.2 (codename: “Touch-Up”), first post has been updated, please PM me for temporary download links until the files are available at some more permanent locations. This update is a cosmetic update–no actual translations were changed in any way from 9.1–so graphical subtitles are the only things changed, with matching subtitles and their related files getting the most attention.

Rough summary of changes from 9.1 to 9.2:

• More improvements to matching subtitles. All matching fonts are now designed to work at normal weight, which should make things a little easier for people using them for other purposes.
• Graphical-only alien subtitles for Star Wars are now nearly as good as those for Jedi (and the ones for Jedi were/are nearly perfect).
• Included instructions and a new font for those who wish to create matching subtitles that mimic the appearance of international 35mm prints (much thanks to thxita, Leonardo, and Laserschwert for reference material, font help, and advice).
• Using these instructions, created reconstructions of the Italian theatrical alien subtitles for Star Wars and Jedi, and the German theatrical subtitles for Jedi. These are the only subtitles for which I had references, so no other reconstructions of international alien subtitles are provided. People could use these instructions to create them using the current Project Threepio translations, but these translations are unlikely to be identical to the theatrical translations.
• Fixed a very minor bug in image resizing operations which was probably not even noticeable outside the Italian alien subs for Star Wars, but it technically affected all 720p subtitles.
• Included instructions for how to correctly extract subtitle images from graphical subtitle files, since it’s actually easy to extract image files that look good at first glance, but have subtle software compatibility issues (i.e. extracting alien subtitles for use with a video editor).

Reconstructed alien and matching subtitles are both generated using the same scripts, which means they’ll produce almost identical results. There is a difference regarding borders on the letters, though (it’s always been there, I just haven’t mentioned it before). Different from the drop shadow, the border is thinner, fainter and completely surrounds the letter on all sides. It is usually completely invisible unless the text overlaps a bright background, and you only really see it in the alien subtitles when the second Greedo subtitle overlaps the lamp on the table, along the upper-left edges of the letters. On the English subtitles, this border is minimal and the edges of the letters are not very distinct. On the Italian Star Wars subtitles, there is no border at all (and no drop shadow either), so the letters simply disappear into the glow of the lamp (yes, really). Since matching subtitles must work against all types of backgrounds (consider Tantive IV, Hoth, etc), they have a border even when you’re trying to match the style of the Italian subtitles, and that border is even more distinct than the border on the English subtitles. So if, for example, you created matching Italian subtitles to go with the reconstructed Italian alien subtitles, Han’s lines would be readable in the parts that overlapped the lamp, and Greedo’s lines would not. In other words, matching subtitles don’t really match 100%, but that’s intentional. The inconsistency is because the ultimate goal of alien subtitles is theatrical fidelity, while the ultimate goal of matching subtitles is still readability.

Also, I’m looking for a new MySpleen seeding volunteer. My own Internet connection is tragically not remotely up to the task, and marvins doesn’t seem to be active anymore, at least at the moment.

Hmm, what about x264?

Is anyone working on AviSynth compatibility? I’m not even sure how CLUT’s are handled in AviSynth anyway, just curious.

We could definitely use an Arabic editor. I’ve sent you a message, check your spam.

PM sent.

towne32 said:

CatBus said:

towne32 said:

Edit: also GOUT is not what I would consider a best offering. 😉

Just because it’s crap doesn’t mean it’s not still the best version of Star Wars you can buy!

True. And the only version of “Star Wars”, too.

It’s not even really that – '93 audio. Which actually means it’s the best-looking version of Star Wars you can buy, an important distinction.

towne32 said:

Edit: also GOUT is not what I would consider a best offering. 😉

Just because it’s crap doesn’t mean it’s not still the best version of Star Wars you can buy!

It would kinda serve a different purpose – rather than “what’s changed in this version?”, it’s “how does despecialized compare to the best offerings from three other avenues?” I find the latter to be a more interesting question.

I dunno. GOUT/SSE/2.7/BD might be the most interesting IMO.

Yeah, that was mostly wishful thinking on my part 😉

But thanks for the info. Now at least our Italian reference materials are complete, give or take a tractor beam control label, and this has yielded some useful things that do apply to other languages (for example, no English subs had references for the letters “q” or “z”).

Okay, I’ve taken a look at these and here’s what I have:

Yes, this confirms the theory that for ROTJ, international prints used the same font as English prints. Looks just a little thinner/sharper, as I guess would be expected if it didn’t go through as many duplication steps. I ended up deciding it more closely matched the English Star Wars font than the Jedi font, which is mostly a matter of very slight differences in letter thickness, and also the English ROTJ periods got squished flatter somehow, and that doesn’t seem to be evident anywhere else.

There are some style differences – for ROTJ, English and German space out the ellipsis (. . .), while Italian doesn’t (…).

And every single 35mm reference so far has had a different translation from the GOUT. Did any early VHS releases use the theatrical translations? I’m just wondering if that’s a possibility for reproducing French or Spanish theatrical subtitles without a 35mm reference, or getting the original German translation for Star Wars.

Yeah, I’ve heard people say it’s a mic sound, but still I think it sounds more like a plastic helmet hitting a piece of the set. Either way, it’s always been there in all the original mixes – they apparently just made it sound more bonkier in the SE. Yet another change that leaves you wondering why they even bothered.